Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday that the situation on the front line of the more than 2½-year-old war against Russia was ‘very, very difficult’ and Ukraine’s forces had to do everything they could over the autumn period.
Nato members should not be deterred from giving more military aid to Ukraine by Vladimir Putin’s “reckless Russian nuclear rhetoric”, said outgoing Nato boss Jens Stoltenberg on Monday.
Russia is hiking state spending on national defence by a quarter in 2025 to 6.3% of gross domestic product (GDP), the highest levels since the Cold War, according to draft budget documents published on Monday.
Frontline situation ‘very, very difficult’, says Zelensky
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday that the situation on the front line of the more than 2½-year-old war against Russia was “very, very difficult” and Ukraine’s forces had to do everything they could over the autumn period.
“Reports on each of our frontline sectors, our capabilities, our future capabilities and our specific tasks: The situation is very, very difficult,” he said in his nightly video address, referring to a meeting with top commanders.
“Everything that can be done this autumn, everything that we can achieve must be achieved,” he said.
Ukrainian military bloggers have reported in recent days that Russian forces have been advancing on the hilltop town of Vuhledar, which Ukrainian forces have defended over the course of the war, in the south of the Donetsk region.
Russian forces have also been advancing slowly for months further north, intending to capture the entire Donbas region, made up of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Monday that its forces had captured the village of Nelipivka, south of the city of Toretsk, one of Moscow’s targets in the area.
Putin’s nuclear talk ‘shouldn’t stop Nato backing Ukraine’
Nato members should not be deterred from giving more military aid to Ukraine by Vladimir Putin’s “reckless Russian nuclear rhetoric”, said outgoing Nato boss Jens Stoltenberg on Monday.
Stoltenberg was reacting to a declaration from Putin last week that Russia could use nuclear weapons if it was struck with conventional missiles, and that Moscow would consider any assault on it supported by a nuclear power to be a joint attack.
Putin’s warning came as the US and its allies deliberate over whether to let Ukraine fire conventional Western missiles deep into Russia. Kyiv says it wants permission to hit targets that are part of Russia’s war effort.
“What we have seen is a pattern of reckless Russian nuclear rhetoric and messaging, and this fits into that pattern,” Stoltenberg, who hands over the Nato leadership to Dutch ex-prime minister Mark Rutte on Tuesday after a decade in charge.
“Every time we have stepped up our support with new types of weapons — battle tanks, long-range fires or F-16s — the Russians have tried to prevent us,” Stoltenberg told Reuters at Nato headquarters on the outskirts of Brussels.
“They have not succeeded and also this latest example should not prevent Nato allies from supporting Ukraine.”
He said Nato had not detected any change in Russia’s nuclear posture “that requires any changes from our side”.
Stoltenberg, a former prime minister of Norway, said the biggest risk to Nato would be if Putin won in Ukraine.
“Then the message will be that when he used military force, but also when he threatened Nato allies, then he gets what he wants and that will make us all more vulnerable,” he said.
“In a war, there are no risk-free options.”
The US administration has so far been reluctant to permit Ukraine to strike deep inside Russia with weapons such as long-range Atacms missiles due to fears of higher tensions with Moscow and potential retaliation.
Some Western officials have also questioned how effective such strikes would be in changing the balance of the war.
Stoltenberg said there was “no silver bullet” that would change everything on the battlefield. But deep strikes inside Russia could make a difference as part of the broader Western effort to help Ukraine repel Russia’s invasion, he said.
Stoltenberg also said any negotiated end to the war would have to include security guarantees for Ukraine from Western powers, above all the US.
Otherwise, he said, Russia would not respect any lines drawn on a map that it was not meant to go beyond.
Russia hikes 2025 defence spending by 25%
Russia is hiking state spending on national defence by a quarter in 2025 to 6.3% of gross domestic product (GDP), the highest levels since the Cold War, according to draft budget documents published on Monday.
Defence spending will rise to 13.5 trillion roubles ($145-billion) in 2025, the fourth year of what Russia calls “a special military operation” in Ukraine, up 25% from the 2024 level.
Defence spending will account for 32% of total 2025 budget expenditure of 41.5 trillion roubles. The draft budget was officially submitted on Monday to the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, for review.
In last year’s draft, the government planned to reduce defence spending by 21% in 2025. The reversal shows the scale of state planners’ continued focus on the military.
In 2022, the year the Ukraine war started, Russia spent 5.5 trillion roubles on defence.
“Resources will be allocated and have already been allocated for equipping the armed forces with the necessary weapons and military equipment, paying military salaries, and supporting defence industry enterprises,” said the finance ministry.
Defence spending is expected to drop to 12.8 trillion roubles in 2026.
Putin promotes loyalists to Russia’s politburo
Putin promoted influential former bodyguard Alexei Dyumin to Russia’s modern-day politburo on Monday, along with a new generation of officials tasked with the functioning of wartime command centres and overseeing the defence industry.
In Putin’s Russia, the Security Council is a key arena for the formulation of decisions on Russia’s most important national security issues, and has been dominated till now by men of the president’s generation, mostly born in the 1950s.
At 52, Dyumin becomes one of the youngest members of the Security Council. According to a decree dated Monday, Putin also appointed Alexander Linets, the 61-year-old head of the Kremlin’s main directorate for special programmes (Gusp), First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov (55) and Veronika Skvortsova (63) to the council.
Putin appointed Dyumin in May to be one of his aides overseeing the defence industry and later that month made him secretary of the advisory State Council, a step that fuelled speculation about his presidential potential.
The Gusp, headed by Linets since 2015, is the secretive successor agency to the Soviet-era directorates which oversaw the functioning of wartime government command centres and coordination. It says it oversees mobilisation for the president, but gives few details.
Linets once served as an officer in the Soviet Union’s interior ministry troops and later in the Federal Security Service (FSB), the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB.
Manturov was promoted to first deputy prime minister in May. He was seated directly to Putin’s left when the Kremlin chief announced changes to Russia’s official nuclear doctrine last week.
Manturov oversees the Russian defence and civilian industry, which has surprised the US and its European allies by ramping up artillery production faster than the whole of the Nato military alliance combined despite sanctions.
Skvortsova heads the federal medical-biological agency and is a former health minister.
Putin, who turns 72 on 7 October, at the same time dismissed Vladimir Yakushev from the Security Council.
G7 aims to finalise deal on $50bn loan to Ukraine by month-end
The Group of Seven (G7) countries want to reach a political agreement on the $50-billion loan for Ukraine by the end of October for the cash to be able to available before the end of this year, a senior European Commission official said on Monday.
The G7 are the US, Canada, Japan, Britain, France, Germany and Italy. The EU as a whole, represented by its institutions, is also part of the group.
“The G7 presidency is now aiming for political commitment on participation in this ... loans initiative around the end of October, which would allow all G7 lenders sufficient time to operationalise loans by the end of this year,” European Commission Executive Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis told the European Parliament.
The loan for Ukraine is to be serviced from profits generated by Russian assets immobilised in the West. More than two-thirds of the assets, some €210-billion, are in the EU.
The EU would therefore provide the bulk — up to €35-billion — of the loan. “There are already clear commitments from Canada, UK and Japan to come on board,” said Dombrovskis.
He said the US was holding back because it needed assurances from Europe that money generated by the frozen assets would be available to repay the loan as long as needed.
The snag is that the EU decision to freeze Russia’s money has to be renewed every six months by unanimity in the 27-nation bloc. That creates legal uncertainty because one country — like the Russia-friendly Hungary — could stop the renewal.
To address to Washington’s concern, the EU wants to extend the renewal period from six to 36 months in a vote by unanimity in October, Dombrovskis said, adding success was likely but not certain.
Hungary and Ukraine ministers hold ‘frank' talks
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said he had had a “very frank one-on-one conversation” with his Hungarian counterpart on Monday, amid disagreements opened up by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Hungary has upset its Nato and European Union allies by keeping close economic ties with Russia and has also refused to join other Western countries in sending arms to help its neighbour.
Kyiv for its part stopped the flow of oil from Russia’s Lukoil in June to refineries in Hungary and Slovakia, forcing Hungary’s MOL to renegotiate the supply through Belarus and Ukraine.
At a joint press conference, Sybiha thanked Budapest for supporting EU sanctions against Russia and said Kyiv was “committed to developing pragmatic and predictable good-neighbourly relations”.
But after Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said Budapest would back any initiative that would achieve peace in Ukraine, Sybiha added pointedly that he hoped Hungary would continue to support “Ukrainian initiatives” — referring to plans advanced by Kyiv that reject any Russian territorial gains.
Szijjarto said Hungary “would like Ukraine to abstain in future from those unilateral steps taken recently that posed special challenges to Hungary’s energy supply”, but had no plan to restrict gas flows or its substantial power exports to Ukraine.
He also said Hungary wanted to take part in rebuilding Ukraine.
Budapest has also clashed with Kyiv over what it says are curbs on the rights of roughly 150,000 ethnic Hungarians in western Ukraine to use their native tongue.
Kyiv denies that such restrictions exist, but Sybiha said both sides had “noted a positive dynamic in resolving this issue”. DM